Following the five-day junior doctors industrial action period, I can’t thank each and every one of you enough for working together, supporting each other and keeping people safe during this period.
We managed the demand on and flow through our services really well. A special thank you must go to our medical colleagues who worked really hard to provide cover.
This all reflects the excellent preparation and planning that went into ensuring that we could manage during this time. I appreciate that this was challenging at times and required great examples of different teams working together.
We are aware that demand was as high as ever and this was managed by different ways of working. If you have any best practice or positive feedback that you would like to highlight and focus on in future, please get in touch and let us know.
Preparing for industrial action
The consultant industrial action will begin on Thursday morning and last 48-hours. Plans are in place to cover this period and we need your support to help us deliver services as effectively as possible.
We know that early senior decision making is imperative to managing the flow through our hospitals. We need to keep up our continued focus on getting people who are ready to leave hospital home as early in the day as possible, with wards making best use of our discharge lounge.
Senior support and advice will be available to all our medical colleagues. Please contact the clinical site managers on bleep 110.
The radiographer industrial action next week will also have a significant impact on our services, with routine appointments and non-urgent diagnostics affected. This will affect flow through our services so we need to continue to ensure that we focus on the above priorities.
While you do not have to tell us if you are planning to take part in any action we would be extremely grateful if you can indicate your intentions to your practice manager or clinical lead – this helps us to ensure we are in the best position to provide safe patient care where possible.
For those of you who decide to not take part in the industrial action, please can you report in to the medical workforce team from 8am to 5pm on the day of action. This can either be in person at the medical workforce office located on the ground floor of Hengrave House (just before Bayview Restaurant) or by calling Tracy Lyon on MS Teams. This is extremely important as we need to record your attendance for payroll purposes.
As a gesture of goodwill, we are once again providing a space in the wellness room (the old café) in the Horizon Centre where anyone on the picket line can have a drink or shelter from the weather. Tea and coffee will be provided. Any consultants who are taking part in the industrial action cannot be on trust property for anything other than to access the space in the Horizon Centre. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
We know that the decision to take part in industrial action can be difficult, and your decision is a personal one which will be determined by numerous factors. We ask that you continue to show kindness and respect each other’s decisions.
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